Anna Lo Prete

Openness, Financial Markets, and Policies: Cross-Country and Dynamic Patterns

We document significant and robust empirical relationships in cross-country panel data between government size or social expenditure on the one hand, and trade and financial development indicators on the other. Across countries, deeper economic integration is associated with more intense government redistribution, but more developed financial markets weaken that relationship. Over time, controlling for country-specific effects, public social expenditure appears to be eroded by globalization trends where financial market development can more easily substitute for it.

Reforms, Finance, and Current Accounts

We analyze the implications of labor market reforms for an open economy’s human capital investment and future production. A stylized model shows that labor market deregulation can imply more positive current account balances if financial markets are imperfect and labor market institutions not only distort labor allocation, but also smooth income. Empirically, in OECD country-level panel data, we find that labor market deregulation has been positively related to current account surpluses on average and more strongly so when and where financial market access was more limited. These results are robust to inclusion of standard determinants of current account imbalances, and do not appear to be driven by cyclical phenomena.

Current account imbalances, trade and finance

This article analyses how trade-related policy choices and financial development affect current account imbalances in OECD countries. Once the policy-related component of trade openness is estimated using exogenous-to-policy indicators of globalization pressures, legal origins and natural openness, financial development plays a significant role and is negatively associated with the current account.This article analyses how trade-related policy choices and financial development affect current account imbalances in OECD countries. Once the policy-related component of trade openness is estimated using exogenous-to-policy indicators of globalization pressures, legal origins and natural openness, financial development plays a significant role and is negatively associated with the current account.

Inequality and the finance you know: does economic literacy matter?

In a sample of advanced and developing countries observed over the 1980–2007 period, this paper documents that the ability to use financial instruments and deal with financial market complexity that indicators of economic literacy proxy for is significantly and robustly associated to a lower variation in income inequality. The direct association between financial development and inequality usually referred to as the “finance-inequality nexus”, instead, is not significant in long-run regressions that control for the level of economic literacy nor in panel regressions.

Labour Market Institutions and Household Consumption Insurance within OECD Countries

This paper tests empirically whether the effect of idiosyncratic income shocks on aggregate consumption depends on institutional features of national labour markets. The results show that, in a sample of 15 OECD countries, institutional heterogeneity is a significant determinant of the response of household consumption to country�?specific income shocks. This is consistent with the idea that institutionally provided social insurance may help increase income stability when people differ in their ability to access financial markets and smooth consumption fluctuations.